The day the exam results came out, Song Qingci was washing dishes at the Chinese restaurant.
Her phone buzzed. She dried her hands on her apron and pulled it out. An email from NYU. She opened it and saw her transcript: Entrance Exam, First Place, 998/1000 total score.
She knew where the two deducted points were—on one problem, she'd skipped too many derivation steps. The answer was right, but the process wasn't rigorous enough.
She put the phone back in her pocket and continued washing dishes.
Old Zhou was chopping vegetables nearby. He glanced at her. "What's wrong? You look upset."
"Nothing. I got first place, but not a perfect score."
Old Zhou's knife stopped mid-air. "First place? What more do you want?"
"I told you. My standard is perfect."
Old Zhou shook his head, muttering something about "you academics," and went back to chopping.
Three days later, an email came from Donovan Black.
"Miss Song, please come to my office at three o'clock on Friday."
She took a half-day off, put on the white shirt Rachel had given her, and went to NYU. Donovan's office was on the top floor of the Stern School of Business. The door was open. He sat behind his desk, a computer before him.
"Sit." Donovan pointed to the chair across from him.
Song Qingci sat down. She noticed a copy of her transcript on his desk, along with a copy of one of her assignments. The assignment was covered in red annotations—all in Donovan's handwriting.
"I read your entrance exam," Donovan said, taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "998 points. Very impressive."
"Thank you."
"But I didn't call you here because of your score." He turned and took a file folder from his drawer, placing it on the desk. "It's because of your assignment. On one problem, you used a method I'd never seen before. Did you derive it yourself?"
"Yes."
"Show me the derivation."
Song Qingci took a notebook from her bag, flipped to a page, and pushed it toward him. It was filled with formulas and derivation steps—small handwriting, but very clear.
Donovan looked at it for a full five minutes.
Then he raised his head and looked into her eyes.
"Miss Song, you are the most talented student I have seen in twenty years."
Song Qingci didn't smile. "Professor, talent is cheap. Execution is what matters."
Donovan paused, then laughed. "You're right." He took a piece of paper from the folder and slid it across the desk. "Then I won't waste words. This is a live trading account. Starting capital: one thousand dollars. Turn it into two thousand in one month."
Song Qingci looked down at the paper. Account password. Trading platform. Deadline.
"Only one rule," Donovan said, holding up a finger. "No additional principal. No leverage. No high-frequency algorithms. Pure fundamental analysis and technical judgment. Can you do it?"
"Yes."
"You don't ask why?"
"There's no need. You gave me this opportunity. I just need to seize it."
Donovan looked at her, something new in his eyes—not appreciation, but a deeper recognition.
"Miss Song, do you know what kind of person is the most dangerous on Wall Street?"
"What kind?"
"Not the smartest. Not the richest. It's the poorest, the most desperate, the ones with no way out. Because those people will fight."
Song Qingci folded the paper and put it in her pocket.
"Professor, I am that kind of person."
She walked out of the office. Rachel was waiting in the hallway.
"How'd it go? What did the professor say?"
"He gave me an account. A thousand dollars. Double it in a month."
"A thousand to two thousand? That sounds easy."
"It's not easy." Song Qingci pressed the elevator button. "A thousand to two thousand is a hundred percent return. Buffett's annual return is only twenty percent. A hundred percent in one month means either winning or losing everything."
"What happens if you lose it all?"
"Then there's no next time."
Rachel looked at her, hesitant.
"You're worried about me?" Song Qingci asked.
"A little."
"Don't be." The elevator doors opened, and she stepped inside. "I won't lose."
That night, Song Qingci didn't go to work. She took the night off, returned to the basement, and powered up the laptop she'd bought from a secondhand market.
The screen was small, only twelve inches. Two keys were missing from the keyboard. She plugged in an external keyboard and opened the trading platform.
One thousand dollars. On Wall Street, that amount wasn't even pocket change. But to her, it was the down payment on her entire future.
She didn't rush to trade. She spent three days researching instruments, reading financial reports, analyzing charts, tracking news. On the fourth day, at two in the morning, she found her target—a biotech stock that had been severely undervalued, hammered down to historic lows by a negative report. But she read the report carefully and found flaws in the data.
She verified her analysis three times, confirming she hadn't made a mistake.
Then she placed her order.
One thousand dollars. All in.
Buy price: $3.20.
In the days that followed, she woke up every morning to check the market. The stock oscillated between $3.10 and $3.50. Someone was suppressing the price; someone else was accumulating. She placed a sell order at $3.40, but it didn't execute.
On the fifteenth day, good news broke. The company's new drug had passed Phase II clinical trials. The stock opened at $4.80, a sharp jump.
She didn't sell.
On the eighteenth day, it hit $5.50. On the twenty-third day, $7.20. Some began taking profits, and the price pulled back. She re-analyzed the fundamentals, concluded there was still room to run, and bought another five hundred shares—bought with money she'd saved from working over the past two weeks, not from Donovan's principal.
On the twenty-eighth day, the stock broke $10.
Her account balance: the initial $1,000 had turned into $3,100. Adding her own five hundred shares, total value $4,600.
She'd completed the task two days early.
She took a screenshot and sent it to Donovan.
At three in the morning, Donovan replied instantly.
"Miss Song, you turned $1,000 into $3,100 in twenty-eight days. Do you know what this means?"
"What?"
"It means you can survive on Wall Street."
Song Qingci looked at the screen and set her phone on the desk.
Outside the grate, the sky was beginning to lighten.
She lay her head on the desk and closed her eyes.
Her fingers still trembled—not from tension, but from excitement.
She finally knew where she belonged.
Not in the six-square-meter basement. Not in the kitchen of that Chinese restaurant. Not in anyone's shadow.
She belonged here. Belonged to the screen with its dancing numbers. Belonged to the charts at three in the morning. Belonged to this world that drove people mad and kept them clear-headed.
She fell asleep.
The lamp stayed on. The computer screen still glowed.
On the wall, her shadow stretched.
Larger than it had been a month ago.